It's a dirty little secret among supporters of the United
Nations: The closer you get to seeing how the sausage is actually made in Turtle
Bay, the more you wonder whether the UN-bashers have a point. The entire system
is in such dire need of an overhaul--from its encrusted bloc politics and rigid
personnel policies to its bureaucratic waste and pockets of cronyism--that even
the most dedicated multilateralist may begin to channel his inner John Bolton.
The big difference, of course, is that committed multilateralists are dedicated
to reforming and strengthening, rather than crippling and weakening, the world
body. Speaking last Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ambassador
Joseph Torsella, the Obama administration's point man for UN management reform,
explained
what the United States is doing to shake up business as usual in New York. Its
point of departure, as President Obama has stated, is that the United Nations is both "flawed" and
"indispensable."

Let's start with the flawed part. As Torsella rightly noted,
there are "at least two UNs," and neither presents a pretty picture. One is the
global institution itself. This "UN" is composed of departments, programs and
agencies that deliver many essential services like peacekeeping and
humanitarian assistance. But it is also plagued by outmoded management systems,
too little transparency and accountability, and mind-boggling waste. The other
"UN" is composed of 193 diverse and often fractious member states that too
often treat the world body as a spoils system, cling to outdated blocs like the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) or the Group of 77, and play to the galleries with
irresponsible behavior. And predictably, the two "UNs" tend to blame each other
for their failures.

The United Nations is also trapped in the past, structured
to address traditional dangers of inter-state war, rather than the
transnational threats--like "proliferation, terrorism, degradation and
disease"--that dominate today's global security agenda.

Torsella himself admitted that achieving all of them is not
realistic, so it's important to prioritize among them. Restoring the UN's
"integrity" should be job one. Nothing weakens the United Nations more than
self-inflicted wounds to its reputation, whether it is electing Cuba to the
Human Rights Council, or permitting North Korea to assume the chair of the UN
Disarmament Commission. The administration is working hard to prevent the UN
from being its own worst enemy, Torsella explained, including by "working
overtime to keep the worst offenders off UN bodies," fighting for competitive
elections (as opposed to regional rotations) for seats on UN bodies, and
preventing countries under Security Council sanctions from assuming UN
leadership roles. One of the administration's most promising ideas is forging a
new "credibility caucus" in New York to establish "membership criteria" and
"promote truly competitive elections" to the Human Rights Council.

Promoting "accountability" registers as a close second.
Transparency at the United Nations remains appalling. This facilitates
mismanagement and contributes to public mistrust worldwide. Under heavy
pressure, UN member states agreed to create an Office of Internal Oversight
Services (OIOS), but funding and staffing remain inadequate, and the office is
subject to political interference. To shed more light across the UN system, the
Obama administration is pressing for a stronger OIOS, urging greater
involvement by civil society watchdogs, and asking "UN funds and programs to
post audits on the web, as UNICEF and UNDP recently pledged to do." As Torsella
explains:

Websites like the U.S. government's recovery.gov, the UK's
dfid.gov, and Kentucky's opendoor.gov make unprecedented amounts of
information--about salaries, contracts and budgets--easily available to the
public. We're going to ask the UN system to do the same.

Furthermore, some reasonably minor and feasible management
reforms could drastically improve the UN's ability to deliver--and even deliver
"excellence." Changing UN personnel rules would make it easier to hire
qualified staff and eliminate under-performers. Second, consolidating the
delivery of services by multiple UN agencies within target countries, under a
strong UN resident coordinator system, would allow the UN to truly "deliver as
one." And a third step would be strengthening the evaluation of UN development programs--taking
a page from the World Bank and other institutions--by focusing on outcomes and
impact, not simply inputs.

In a period of fiscal austerity, finally, the UN cannot be
immune. Here's where "thrift" comes in. Over the last twenty years, the UN's
regular, two-year budget (not counting peacekeeping or other missions) rose an
average of 5 percent a year, far faster than inflation. But thanks to pressure
by the United States and like-minded governments, Torsella noted proudly, UN
member states had just voted for only the second budget reduction in the last
fifty years (and the first since 1998), a 5 percent decline from $5.41 to $5.15
billion.

As Torsella reminded his CFR audience, the United States has
a fundamental stake in a credible, effective, and legitimate United Nations.

"Because--at its
best--the UN can help prevent conflict, keep the peace, isolate terrorists and
criminals, go where nobody else will care for the neediest of the world, smooth
the channels of global commerce, and promote universal values that Americans
hold dear. That's why the United States led in creating the UN in 1945, and why
we continue to lead in renewing the UN today."

The reform agenda Torsella described reflects this
constructive legacy in being sober, reasoned, and balanced.

That's a far cry from what we've heard from the Republican
presidential candidates. Like their counterparts in the House, the GOP contenders have adopted
a slash and burn approach to the world body. Newt Gingrich, this
weekend's victor in South Carolina, last summer called
for defunding the UN. (Prior to dropping out, Texas Governor Rick Perry advocated the same in a televised debate). Rick Santorum,
who's taking his fight to Florida, has made halving U.S. funding for the UN part of his official
platform. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, called
recent UN work an "extraordinary failure," and endorses John Bolton's proposal that the United States
defund the Human Rights Council--despite recent U.S. progress in improving that
body's functioning. The libertarian Ron Paul gets even spookier, describing the
United Nations as a threat to American liberty. (In 1998, he even warned that it "would confiscate our guns" if it got the
chance).

Whoever is elected in November must be careful not to throw
the baby out with the bathwater. Many of the reforms UN critics identify are
needed not only in Geneva and New York, but also in Washington, DC--underscoring
the foolishness of trashing a flawed but indispensable organization. Kudos to
Ambassador Torsella for putting forth such an ambitious framework and for illuminating
a viable path for UN reform.

This article originally appeared at CFR.org, an Atlantic partner site.

Most Popular

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

Why did Trump’s choice for national-security advisor perform so well in the war on terror, only to find himself forced out of the Defense Intelligence Agency?

How does a man like retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn—who spent his life sifting through information and parsing reports, separating rumor and innuendo from actionable intelligence—come to promote conspiracy theories on social media?

Perhaps it’s less Flynn who’s changed than that the circumstances in which he finds himself—thriving in some roles, and flailing in others.

In diagnostic testing, there’s a basic distinction between sensitivity, or the ability to identify positive results, and specificity, the ability to exclude negative ones. A test with high specificity may avoid generating false positives, but at the price of missing many diagnoses. One with high sensitivity may catch those tricky diagnoses, but also generate false positives along the way. Some people seem to sift through information with high sensitivity, but low specificity—spotting connections that others can’t, and perhaps some that aren’t even there.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

Democrats who have struggled for years to sell the public on the Affordable Care Act are now confronting a far more urgent task: mobilizing a political coalition to save it.

Even as the party reels from last month’s election defeat, members of Congress, operatives, and liberal allies have turned to plotting a campaign against repealing the law that, they hope, will rival the Tea Party uprising of 2009 that nearly scuttled its passage in the first place. A group of progressive advocacy groups will announce on Friday a coordinated effort to protect the beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act and stop Republicans from repealing the law without first identifying a plan to replace it.

They don’t have much time to fight back. Republicans on Capitol Hill plan to set repeal of Obamacare in motion as soon as the new Congress opens in January, and both the House and Senate could vote to wind down the law immediately after President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office on the 20th.

Trinidad has the highest rate of Islamic State recruitment in the Western hemisphere. How did this happen?

This summer, the so-called Islamic State published issue 15 of its online magazine Dabiq. In what has become a standard feature, it ran an interview with an ISIS foreign fighter. “When I was around twenty years old I would come to accept the religion of truth, Islam,” said Abu Sa’d at-Trinidadi, recalling how he had turned away from the Christian faith he was born into.

At-Trinidadi, as his nom de guerre suggests, is from the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a country more readily associated with calypso and carnival than the “caliphate.” Asked if he had a message for “the Muslims of Trinidad,” he condemned his co-religionists at home for remaining in “a place where you have no honor and are forced to live in humiliation, subjugated by the disbelievers.” More chillingly, he urged Muslims in T&T to wage jihad against their fellow citizens: “Terrify the disbelievers in their own homes and make their streets run with their blood.”

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

A new survey suggests many might prefer a kind of multipolar Washington, with three distinct orbits of power checking each other.

Does Donald Trump have a mandate?

Though last month’s election provided Trump and his fellow Republicans unified control of the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate for the first time since 2006, the latest Allstate/Atlantic Media Heartland Monitor Poll shows the country remains closely split on many of the key policy challenges facing the incoming administration—and sharply divided on whether they trust the next president to take the lead in responding to them.

In addition, on several important choices facing the new administration and Congress, the survey found that respondents who voted for Trump supported a position that was rejected by the majority of adults overall. That contrast may simultaneously encourage Trump to press forward on an agenda that energizes his coalition, while emboldening congressional Democrats to resist him.